Tuesday June 13, 2006
The mini crosses over
| Mac mini (Apple Computer, Inc) Desktop Mac Processor: Intel Core Duo 1.66GHz Chipset: Not specified Memory: 512MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM Display: Not included, supports both DVI and 15-pin analogue monitors Graphics: Intel GMA 950 Sound: Built-in audio Storage: 80GB hard drive, slot-loading dual-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW drive. Operating system: Mac OS X 10.4 Connectivity: Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, 802.11g wireless LAN. Keyboard and mouse: Not included, USB interface I/O ports: Four USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire port, audio-out, line-in Other features: Apple Remote for Front Row Price: RM3,299 Website: www.applemalaysia.com.my Review unit courtesy of Apple Malaysia (03) 2711-1888 |
SHORT of buying yourself a Power Mac G5, the Mac mini has been the cheapest way to get a Mac without a built-in display. In fact, it is the most affordable Mac in Apple’s lineup.
Unfortunately, its performance never exceeded its budget price tag. The Mac mini has always been endowed with the slowest processors (a 1.42GHz PowerPC G4 in its previous iteration), which was still okay for 90% of your daily needs but not quite enough for more demanding users.
Which brings us to the new Mac mini, now powered by either a 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo or a faster 1.66GHz Core Duo processor (as featured in this review).
Whether you’re using a notebook PC or one of the new Intel Macs, the Core Duo processors have garnered quite a good reputation – they’re really fast.
But ironically, the new Mac mini remains the slowest Mac in Apple’s lineup – even the low-end MacBook packs a faster Core Duo proccesor (1.83GHz). So is the new mini small fry or cili padi?
A tiny tradition
The new Mac mini has exactly the same form factor as its predecessor, which means it’s about as small as a five stacked CD jewel cases. It runs almost silently as well, which is important if you’re a HiFi nut.
Take a peek behind the Mac mini and you might notice a couple of changes. The 56K dialup modem is gone, but there are now four USB 2.0 ports (up from just two) and there’s now a line-in / microphone jack as well, which is convenient if you’re planning to record music or podcasts with GarageBand.
If you look closely at the front of the mini, you’ll see an infrared sensor to the right of the optical drive for the bundled Apple Remote.
Like the iMac and MacBook Pro, the Mac mini comes with Apple’s Front Row software, which gives you an iPod-like interface to view the media files on your Mac.
The latest updates have improved Front Row’s stability and have added the ability to view iTunes-compatible shared music/videos on other PCs/Macs on your network.
However, it’s still a little buggy and could do with some user-interface improvements.
Theoretically, you could have a Mac mini permanently hooked up to a plasma or LCD television (via DVI inputs) and use it like a Media Centre PC – especially if you’ve got the wireless Bluetooth Apple keyboard and mouse.
You can connect the Mac mini to an analogue CRT television through Apple’s DVI-video connector. We couldn’t get our hands on a review unit, but the picture quality from the adaptor has received mixed reviews from around the Net.
As usual, you’ve got the iLife ‘06 suite of programs for making music, editing and burning home videos to DVD, writing blogs and so on, which is nice if you do these sort of things.
You’ve got the power
On paper, the 1.66GHz Core Duo Mac mini has a huge advantage over the single core 1.5GHz model – especially since most applications these days are multi-threaded and will take advantage of multiple processors in some way.
The Mac mini runs circles round In.Tech’s own 1.8GHz Power Mac G5 and keeps fairly close to the 2GHz Core Duo iMac in all processor-intensive tasks and benchmarks (except games, but more on that later). Just out of curiosity, we threw a Dell Dimension 8400 into the mix (3.2GHz Pentium 4, 1GB RAM).
In the Cinebench software 3D rendering benchmark (www. cinebench.com) the Mac mini attained a score of 485 in the CPU benchmark, which is 197% the speed of our single processor Power Mac G5 (score: 245), 82% as fast as the Core Duo iMac (score: 590) and 151% the speed of the Dell (score: 325). Not bad at all.
For our Quicktime 7 test we converted the three-minute-long 720p resolution H.264-encoded King Kong movie trailer into the default video for iPod (320 x 240pixels) format.
The Mac mini completed the task in 2 minutes 56 seconds. The Power Mac G5 is 68% as fast (4:18), the iMac is Core Duo iMac is 122% as fast (2:24) and the Dell is 63% as fast (4:40).
So yes, the new Mac mini is really good at processor intensive tasks. I can’t wait till Adobe releases an Intel version of Photoshop. Oh, wait? there’s the Windows XP version :)
However, there are plenty of other factors that affect the Mac mini’s overall performance, such as hard disk speeds and the amount of RAM installed – especially since about 64MB of RAM is eaten up by the integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics chip.
Using Adobe Lightroom Beta 2 to search through image libraries and make minor image adjustments, the Mac mini was noticeably more sluggish than the Core Duo iMac and was about as responsive as the Power Mac G5. I’d recommend getting at least 1GB of RAM with the Mac mini – reports from around the Web suggest that doing so would give a significant performance boost.
Conclusion
Depending on your needs, the Mac mini is either a bargain or a bit of a disappointment.
While it’s really fast at processor-intensive tasks like video encoding or image editing, the integrated Intel GMA950 chip limits its capabilities in applications that stress the Mac’s graphics chip (i.e. games and anything that relies on Apple’s Core Image and Core Video APIs).
However, the Mac mini is still a great option for those looking to buy their first Mac. It’s affordable, well configured and is a big improvement over its predecessor in every way. Except for games, of course.
Pros: Fast processor; useful improvements here and there; affordable.
Cons: Slow graphics chip.
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